<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Two solitudes by jonasnightingale</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27629915">Two solitudes</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonasnightingale/pseuds/jonasnightingale'>jonasnightingale</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Heavy Accents &amp; Swollen Ankles [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Law &amp; Order: SVU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Comments are love, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Rollisi, Season 22, Touch-Starved, no beta we die like men, otp: I just want her to be happy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 17:34:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,613</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27629915</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonasnightingale/pseuds/jonasnightingale</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 22x01. Amanda and Sonny stop running away.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr. &amp; Amanda Rollins, Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr./Amanda Rollins</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Heavy Accents &amp; Swollen Ankles [8]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595524</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>78</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Two solitudes</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He’s there when they get back from telling Eric’s family the hard news. Pacing the squad room on his phone, brow burrowed and looking like he holds the weight of the world on his shoulders. She sinks into her chair to wait him out as Kat clocks out and bids a goodnight. He’s lost weight lately, his suits hanging gaunt across his lanky frame. There’s a timbre of resignation to his voice when he walks to her and asks “How’d it go?” She shrugs, “As expected.” Her gaze follow his hand as he scrubs it roughly down his face, lingers on the deep lines beneath his eyes. She’s surprised by how steady, how plain, her voice is when she says “Come home with me.” It’s not cushioned in any jokes about cooking this time, and there’s no suggestion to it, it just falls somewhere between a request and a direction. He blinks at her, face blank, before his eyes dart away. She prepares herself for the rejection, for another half-hearted rain check, but then he is leaning forward and picking her coat up, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” The simple act of walking out of the precinct side by side feels so familiar that her heart warms, she looks up at him, always so firm beside her. She thinks about how he had said “<em>we</em>” earlier today when talking about the NYPD - he’s changed, but he’ll always be her partner, always be a cop. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">She watches him play with Jesse, watches the natural ease with which the pair build and rebuilt legos on the rug, the chirpy bubble of their conversation reaching her at Billie’s door. “You’re really good at this Jess, maybe you should be an engineer and you can build beautiful bridges like that right here in New York.” “Or in Iran.” Rollins rolls her eyes, Hasim had told Jesse about his overseas travels the other week and since then it had been Iran this and Iran that. “Sure. All over the world.” His sleeves are rolled up, tie and coat discarded on the back of the couch, and her eyes snag on the darkening colour of his wrist - the angry red and purple of a bruise coming through. She makes her way into the kitchen, pulling out an icepack and smiling at the photo stuck to the fridge before joining them in the lounge. Her fingers move to his arm delicately and his smile drops, arm jerking away as he mutters “It’s fine, Rollins.” She is undeterred, meeting his gaze firmly, “Dominick, just let me help.” Jesse crawls over into his lap to investigate the injury and even as he keeps the young girl steady with one arm, Amanda can feel his gaze bore into her head. She tries to keep her breathing steady as she rubs hirudoid cream into his skin, listening to him explain to Jesse how it’s okay, it was just a small accident, he’ll be better real soon. She presses the ice pack gently to the skin and leans back, smiling at them both and proclaiming “All fixed.” Jesse shakes her head vigorously, “Momma, you’ve got to kiss it better.” Even as Carisi starts trying to explain their way out of this, Amanda touches his hand again, lifting it carefully upwards. The words die on his tongue as their gaze locks and she slowly places a lingering kiss to the inside of his wrist. He wonders if she can feel his heart beating rapidly against her lips. She pulls back and lowers his arm, eyes still glued together, as Jesse loudly parrots “All fixed.”</span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">Two hours later and Jesse is asleep with a smile on her face and arms wrapped tight around the RGB plush Carisi had given her the other week. Back in the kitchen, Rollins finds no matching mirth on Carisi’s face. His arms are tense on the bench, head hung and shoulders bunched. She steps towards him slowly, hand ghosting his back as he shudders in a breath. So often he has done this for her, held her together when she threatened to go to pieces, told her things would be okay, gripped her hand tight and refused to leave her side. She thinks of falling into him that morning after Bucci, the weight of his cheek on her head, his voice whispering “<em>I’ve got you</em>.”, thinks of him kneeled beside her in the hospital hallway, “<em>I’m not going anywhere.”</em> Her hand lands on his bicep, pulls his attention to her. “You did everything you could.” Her voice is soft but firm, leaves no room for question, but his is broken when he replies, “Yeah, but it wasn’t enough.” His eyes are haunted, traitorous bruises beneath them that tell of nights of unrest; she misses the joyous gleam they once held, the laughter that used to live barely concealed there. There’s no apt response to that, nothing she says will change this. The world doesn’t trust them anymore. A violent offender walked free. Eric will get no justice. Her hand slips up his face, traces the five o’clock shadow there, then drifts into his hair, into the bed of new greys. It’s not really a conscious decision when she leans forward and presses her lips against his in a whisper of a kiss. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He jerks back, eyes wide, and she feels her face flush in shame. She hadn’t wanted to be this person, didn’t want to push her emotions onto him yet again. He’d made it so clear lately exactly where they stood and she couldn’t bear for another chasm to open between them, couldn’t handle more clipped conversations and watching his back leaving her behind in the court room corridors. The apology isn’t through her lips when he moves forward, face meeting hers in a kiss that is cautious, hesitant. Her eyes slip closed and she lets her hands lift up, looping around his neck and feeling his shoulders relax, feeling his hands return the gesture. She melts into the dance of lips, the warmth of his hands spanning her back. It’s not how she thought this would happen, on nights when she’s let herself picture it, on nights when she’s imagined that bar fight in Virginia ended differently. He’s careful, unsure. If they’re about to blow everything up she wants him to stop holding back, she pushes further into the kiss, grins when his fingers flex into her hips. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">When they part her eyes are hooded, his mouth hangs open in an unarticulated question, and the look in his eyes is unreadable. She searches for something to say, flits her gaze across his face trying to decipher the expression. Her voice is quiet, “Feel better now?” He blinks at her, closing his gaping mouth. He clears his throat before replying but still the accent is heavy, the tone gravelly - “That what this is about?”. She looks at him through her lashes, bottom lip caught in her teeth for a second before the response tumbles out, “This is whatever you want it to be Dominick.” There’s a beat of silence, where his brows knit together and then smooth, and then he’s surging forward. This time the hesitance is thrown aside. There is barely restrained passion in the hot push of their lips, in the frantic searching of their hands, the pull of each other closer. The movement is frenzied, deep kisses and firm grips, and she sighs as lifts her smoothly onto the counter. She wraps her legs around his hips and he pulls her closer, fingers tracing up her sides, sliding into her blonde locks. For a fraction of a moment she thinks of Bridget Jones, of Bridget saying “<em>Good guys don’t kiss like that.”</em>, turns out Mark Darcy was right, who knew. Her hand rests on his chest, feeling the frantic drum of his heartbeat beneath her palm. His teeth graze across her lips and she feels a shudder work it’s way up her spine. Fingers working at the buttons of his vest she tightens her legs around him. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">It’s everything he had wanted. Maybe not the scenario, maybe not the week they’d had, but this, them, in her apartment after an evening with the girls, no drinks, no emergency, nothing to hide behind. Whatever else happened, this is real. </span>
</p><p class="p1">
  <span class="s1">He feels the moment everything changes. The hurried push of her lips halts, her muscles constrict, shoulders raising. He pulls back in an instant, catalogues the panic on her face, the laboured gasps of breath pushing out of her lungs. “I do something wrong?” he keeps his eyes glued on her face, tracking the emotions cycling through her gaze, she just shakes her head, focuses on trying to regulate her breathing. He steps back, tries to give her space but she halts him with a hand quickly looped around his wrist. “Sorry,”, he interrupts her with a head shake of his own, “Sorry, it’s just …<em>a lot.</em>” She’s cast her head down, eyes on the cling of her hand on his arm. So reminiscent of the day Billie was born. “I just… I feel like I haven’t touched another adult in <em>months</em> Sonny, since before the pandemic. And then we’re… here. And it’s <em>you</em>.” He flips his hand in her grasp, knits their fingers together. When she meets his gaze it is warm and receptive. “Dominick, I can’t lose you again. Not now.” All the walls inside him collapse, every box he’d shoved their history into pouring loose into his gut, he looks at her with unguarded eyes. “You won’t. We’re gonna be just fine ‘Manda.” He rests his forehead on hers, matches his breathing to hers, “We’re gonna be just fine.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>“Once again I come upon his famous definition of love: two solitudes that protect and border and greet each other.”<br/>― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>